Do Phils have another Bystrom coming in September?

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No Phillies rookie has made a bigger impact as a September call-up than Marty Bystrom.

The Phillies were a game behind the Expos in the NL East when Bystrom made his big league debut on Sept. 7, 1980. He started three days later, pitching a five-hit shutout to beat the Mets. The Phillies went 16-8 the rest of the way to win the division by a game. Bystrom was a major part of it. He went 5-0 with a 1.50 ERA in six appearances (five starts). He later pitched Game 5 of the NLCS and Game 5 of the World Series.

The Phillies won both.

It makes you wonder: Is there a Bystrom coming this September, too?

Rosters will expand Thursday. In the past, teams could call up anybody and everybody on the 40-man roster. But the rules have changed. Teams get only two callups this year, and only one can be a pitcher. You think about pitchers, of course, and you immediately think about the organization’s top three pitching prospects at Double-A Reading: Andrew Painter, Mick Abel and Griff McGarry. Painter is a combined 5-1 with a 1.11 ERA at three levels this season. He is the No. 25 prospect in baseball, according to MLB Pipeline. Abel is a combined 8-8 with a 3.94 ERA at two levels. He is the No. 57 prospect in baseball. McGarry is a combined 3-6 with a 3.26 ERA at two levels. He is the organization’s No. 4 prospect.

“We’re more apt to call up people who have been here,” Phillies president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski said Thursday. “For example, Seranthony [Domínguez] is scheduled to come off the injured list next week. That’s an automatic add. We’ve had a lot of interchangeable guys from a position player perspective, too. You can only add one pitcher. Now, could something happen? It’s like any other time of the year when somebody is performing well. We wouldn’t discount anybody who’s really good, and those guys are really good. But I can’t also tell you that we’re in a position where we’re sitting here thinking that we’re definitely calling them up.”

It’s not that Dombrowski has never done it before. Andrew Miller pitched for the World Series-bound Tigers in September 2006. Josh Beckett pitched for the Marlins in September 2001, although the Marlins were not contenders.

“You also want to make sure you’re not overtaxing your young pitchers by pitching them too deep into the season,” Dombrowski said. “We have a mindset [on the workload]. They’re within our limits of where they are. We watch them. I don’t think we have a finite number of innings they are going to pitch, because nowadays we just stay on top of it so much. We’re not only watching their velocity, but we have our analytical information. We have their arm angles, if they drop. We’ve got their extension. We’ve got those things. We rely on that much more now as far as shutting them down, while still being cognizant that we don’t want them to pitch too many innings.”

But, like Dombrowski said, they are constantly discussing and evaluating their situation. It already changed Thursday, when they placed Zack Wheeler on the 15-day injured list with right forearm tendinitis.

Dombrowski and Wheeler said they expect him to rejoin the rotation on Sept. 6 against Miami, but time will tell.

At the very least, Painter, Abel and McGarry will be in big league camp next spring. (Note: None of them are on the 40-man roster, so the Phillies will have to make room for them whenever they decide they are ready to pitch in the big leagues.) They will compete with Bailey Falter and Cristopher Sánchez for a likely opening in the rotation.

Kyle Gibson is a free agent after this season. The Phillies and Zach Eflin have a mutual option. It seems unlikely that both will be back.

“I look at one of those guys being capable of pitching in our rotation next year,” Dombrowski said. “Maybe there’s more than one, but traditionally you try to break in one at a time.”

But this September? Don’t bet on it.

“We want to win, first and foremost, but we also want to be in a position where we continue to develop those guys because that’s for their future, too,” Dombrowski said. “They’re really important for us. Not only hopefully next year, but years to come.”